As a business owner, you’re understandably concerned with growing revenue. It can become a fruitless exercise if you’re concentrating your efforts and resources on the wrong channels, so it’s important to keep an updated, top-level view of your marketing channels.
If you’re hoping to outgrow or “wait out” the revenue growth problem, it’s time to shift speeds and come up with a strategy to manage the issue. The need to grow revenue doesn’t disappear the longer a business is around or the larger it grows – if anything, it only increases. Nearly half of all companies that have between 11-100 employees say growing their revenue is the biggest challenge they face in business.
We suggest companies who are looking to grow revenue but aren’t finding success with their current efforts look into doing a quick marketing audit.
Don’t let the term “audit” keep you from taking this valuable action. When we say marketing audit, we simply mean taking a closer look at the marketing channels, costs, and ROI you’re currently seeing from those means. When you have the data from each channel, it’s possible to do a simple comparison that can be eye-opening for companies that have been focusing their budgets and efforts on the wrong channel all along.
Find the marketing channel you’re investing the most resources in and compare it to the marketing channel that actually drives the most revenue. It’s important not to do the audit with any kind of bias – the point is to accurately identify which channel has the most value for your company so you can make beneficial changes, not to support your current strategy so you can pat yourself on the back.
Don’t think this kind of audit can make a real change for your revenue? Consider this. Nearly 60% of business owners who identified as struggling to grow revenue said they believe their website is “an integral part of my business.” Now, consider that a little more than half of the same business owners said their website was responsible for generating less than 11% of their annual revenue. See the discrepancy?
Spend a little time doing a marketing channel audit to find out how you can grow your revenue in the most effective way.
